THIS PAGE HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED Online Poker Room Cheat Ratings

Saturday, March 29, 2008

The ratings I generate for online poker cheating are derived statically from various sources of data and information that I accumulate from both experienced online poker players and statisticians who continuously sort and analyze data sampling millions of hands. I cannot guarantee that my rankings are exactly true to the online poker world at any given moment, as online scams usually develop with startling rapidity as we have certainly seen during the past few years. However, in the long run, you can place a good deal of faith in these rankings as they will pan out even with the sizable deviations due to large scale cheating scams. For instance, Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet were all very risky sites to play on, but only for a short period of time. So the long term result of those scams on these sites would not prevent any of them from appearing on my Top-10 list of safe sites. Many sites that tend not to appear on the list are those that experience constant episodes of cheating, mainly in the form of collusion and bot play, not inside scams as was the case with Absolute Poker. The recent spate of account selling super user scams also had a minimum effect on the overall safety rankings on this website.

As far as hacking to see opponents' hole cards goes, this is very rare, at least without inside employees being involved. Any cases of this kind of cheating will be immediately posted on my main blog.

If you have a question about any online poker or casino website, do not hesitate to e-mail me about it, and I will provide any information I have about the sites in question.

My rating system is a compilation of the three major forms of online cheating: collusion; bots and hacking. Note that hacking is rare, and it has not happened this month on any of the sites on the list.

The main difference in the compilation of data for online casino cheating versus online poker cheating is that the cheating going on at online casinos is primarily instigated by the casinos themselves, through their software or casino bonus, whereas in online poker it is the players who cheat other players. With that fact in mind, it is obvious that much more cheating occurs in online poker than in online casinos, however, there are still instances today of online casino cheating. One facet of online cheating that affects casinos as much as poker rooms is the tampering with player accounts by means of hacking, identity theft, personal "friendship" manipulation and other ways cheaters and crooks employ to glean players' personal information.

The overwhelming majority of online casinos are on the up and up, nonetheless there have been cases in which some websites have been suspected of having fixed their gaming software so that they enjoy and even greater advantage. For instance, a casino's Random Number Generator (RNG), the pre-programmed mechanism that ensures fair play among an online casino's slot machines, blackjack deals and rolls of the dice could be manipulated to payoff less than that casino's advertised slot payout rate, and of course to not deal decks of cards randomly, perhaps loading decks with small cards that give the online casino the advantage. Again, this is rare but it does happen.

Another form of cheating by online casinos is carried out by some very short-sited online casino companies. These shady operators have a tendency to either drag out how long it takes for a player to withdraw cash from their casino account, or prevent them from accessing their cash at all. These "slow poke" websites tend to do this with the mindset that players will simply continue to play, and wager, until they finally lose all their funds, which sadly lots of players do.

My online casino safety rankings take all these factors into account. I cannot assure you that on any given day the rankings are entirely accurate but in the long run they will pan out, giving you a solid idea base of which casinos are safest over an extended period of time. What this means is that a casino ranked 5th in my ratings, might not actually be the fifth safest online casino, but it will surely be A SAFE ONLINE CASINO.

These casino rankings are compiled from statistical analyses, public reporting by industry-trusted media including print journalism, and direct feedback from casino account holders who report suspicious and documented cheating incidents.

About Me

My book, AMERICAN ROULETTE (St. Martin's Press), tells the true story of my twenty-five years as a professional casino cheater. Upon arriving in Las Vegas, in my early twenties, I supported myself solely through legitimate gambling. However, I soon found myself broke and homeless, living under a highway overpass. I eventually sought gainful employment in the only industry I had knowledge of, becoming a Blackjack and Baccarat dealer. Armed with experience on both sides of the tables, my mentor to be, Joe Classon taught the ways of a professional casino cheater.
Although retired, I keep up on the various cons and scams that law enforcement is largely unable to adequately police.